JEFF EDELSTEIN: Trenton-Mercer Airport should be expanded

Attention leaders of Mercer County and Ewing Township. And while we’re at it, attention all businesses within a 50 mile radius, anyone who owns a home, anyone who’s looking for a job, anyone at all: Make sure Trenton-Mercer Airport becomes what it should become, namely a one of America’s major regional airports.

How we’re not already one of the nation’s major regional airports is a matter that can probably be discussed in book-length form, but it does usually come down to one major factor: The NIMBYs, who back in the late 90s, didn’t want jet planes flying over the homes they bought, homes that were built well after the airport was constructed.

Wasn’t that long ago, back around 1999, 2000, when then-County Executive Bob Prunetti wanted to expand the airport. Southwest Airlines seemed ready to move in. But between the NIMBYs and the county freeholders, the expansion was nixed.

Fast forward to 2013, and it seems like the idea of expansion is welcomed by just about anyone with a stake in the matter.

Listen: This airport should be bustling. Flights should be taking off and landing with serious frequency. We’ve got Philadelphia to one side, New York to the other, and a whole lot of middle there in the middle. There is no reason this airport would not succeed if given half a chance..

And it feels like now is the time. A lot is happening at the airport right now. Frontier Airlines has expanded their operations, running flights to and from 10 cities. They seem to want to be in this for the long haul, willing to loan the county $450,000 for some updates to the terminal.

Understand: Frontier is a legit operation, not one of the many (pun intended) fly-by-night operations that have used Trenton-Mercer in the past. They operate 56 planes travelling to 77 different destinations. To compare: Southwest, the world’s largest low-cost carrier, has 10 times the planes, but only seven more destinations. Frontier, in short, is a player, and we should be doing everything in our power to keep them here, everything in our power to help them expand their route selection, everything in our power to make them high on the list of top corporate citizens. Why? Economic driver. Plain and simple. Jobs, tourists, business, the list goes on. This airport should be a major economic driver for Mercer County residents, and right now, it simply isn’t.

If it was up to me, I’d expand the airport, get more carriers in here, turn this sucker into what it could be. No one can tell me this is not a good idea.

I was at the airport the other morning, 7 a.m. Parking lot was full, and there was a bustle to the place I never saw before. An Orlando flight was boarding, and it had the feel of a “real” airport.

I could only imagine what it could look like, what it could be, what it should be.

Right now, the airport is going through a little bit of an awakening. It’s also getting ready for a quick nap, as from Sept. 9 through Nov. 7, Frontier is suspending operations while planned safety work on the runway is completed. I can only hope enough people have used the airport since Frontier arrived so that the county executive’s phone rings off the hook during the shutdown, with travellers begging to get the work done as quick as possible, begging for more flights, begging for what should be the jewel of the county.

Sorry if sound like some booster for Frontier; I can assure you I’m not. But we’re sitting on an economic goldmine here and it’s well past the time to start mining.